As a person who started my very public career at the age of 15, it came with a price.
And that price was years of unsolicited advice. Being the youngest person in every room
for over a decade meant that I was constantly being issued warnings from older
members of the music industry, the media, interviewers, executives.
This advice often presented itself as thinly veiled warnings.
See, I was a teenager in the public eye at a time when our society was absolutely
obsessed with the idea of having perfect young female role models. It felt like every
interview I did included slight barbs by the interviewer about me one day 'running
off the rails.’ That meant a different thing to everyone person said it me.
So I became a young adult while being fed the message that if I didn’t make any
mistakes, all the children of America would grow up to be perfect angels.
However, if I did slip up, the entire earth would fall off
its axis and it would be entirely my fault and I would go to pop star jail forever and
ever. It was all centered around the idea that mistakes equal failure and ultimately,
the loss of any chance at a happy or rewarding life.This has not been my experience.
My experience has been that my mistakes led to the best things in my life.
And being embarrassed when you mess up is part of the human experience.
Getting back up, dusting yourself off and seeing who still wants to hang
out with you afterward and laugh about it? That’s a gift. Thetimes I was told
no or wasn’t included, wasn’t chosen, didn’t win, didn’t make the cut…looking
back, it really feels like those moments were as important, if not more crucial, than
the moments I was told 'yes.’Not being invited to the parties and sleepovers in my
hometown made me feel hopelessly lonely, but because I felt alone,
I would sit in my room and write the songs that would get me a ticket somewhere
else. Having label executives in Nashville tell me that only 35 year old housewives
listen to country music and there was no place for a 13 year old on their roster made
me cry in the car on the way home. But then I’d post my songs on my
MySpace and yes, MySpace, and would message with other teenagers like me who
loved country music, but just didn’t have anyone singing from their perspective.
Having journalists write in-depth, oftentimes critical, pieces about who they perceive
me to be made me feel like I was living in some weird simulation, but it also made
me look inward to learn about who I actually am. Having the world treat my love life
like a spectator sport in which I lose every single game was not a great way to date in
my teens and twenties, but it taught me to protect my private life fiercely.
Being publicly humiliated over and over again at a young age was excruciatingly
painful but it forced me to devalue the ridiculous notion of minute by minute,
ever fluctuating social relevance and likability. Getting canceled on the internet and
nearly losing my career gave me an excellent knowledge of all the types of wine.
I know I sound like a consummate optimist, but I’m really not. I lose perspective
all the time. Sometimes everything just feels completely pointless. I know
the pressure of living your life through the lens of perfectionism. And I know that I’m
talking to a group of perfectionists because you are here today graduating from NYU.
And so this may be hard for you to hear: In your life, you will inevitably misspeak,
trust the wrong people, under-react, overreact, hurt the people who didn’t deserve it,
overthink, not think at all, self sabotage, create a reality where only your experience
exists, ruin perfectly good moments for yourself and others,
deny any wrongdoing, not take the steps to make it right, feel very guilty,
let the guilt eat at you, hit rock bottom, finally address the pain you caused,
try to do better next time, rinse, repeat. And I’m not gonna lie, these mistakes will
cause you to lose things.I’m trying to tell you that losing things doesn’t just mean
losing. A lot of the time, when we lose things, we gain things too.You’re on your
own now. Now you leave the structure and framework of school and chart your own path.
Every choice you make leads to the next choice which leads to the next, and I know
it’s hard to know sometimes which path to take. There will be times in life when you need
to stand up for yourself. Times when the right thing is to back down and apologize.
Times when the right thing is to fight, times when the right thing is to turn and run.
Times to hold on with all you have and times to let go with grace.
Sometimes the right thing to do is to throw out the old schools of thought
in the name of progress and reform. Sometimes the right thing to do is to listen to the
wisdom of those who have come before us. How will you know
what the right choice is in these crucial moments? You won’t. How do I give advice to this
many people about their life choices? I won’t. Scary news is: you’re on your own now.
Cool news is: You’re on your own now. I leave you with this:
We are led by our gut instincts,
our intuition, our desires and fears, our scars and our dreams. And you will screw it up
sometimes. So will I. And when I do, you will most likely read about on the internet.
Anyway…hard things will happen to us. We will recover. We will learn from it.
We will grow more resilient because of it.As long as we are fortunate enough to be
breathing, we will breathe in, breathe through, breathe deep, breathe out.
And I’m a doctor now, so I know how breathing works.I hope you know how proud I
am to share this day with you. We’re doing this together.
So let’s just keep dancing like we’re…the class of 22.
PS:This article just copy from internet for study instead of commerce.